The geeky data trendsetter in me loves to play with Google trends. For fun, I looked up the term "comfort food" to see what kind of patterns unfold for search.
Note: The letters are just references to news stories which are related to the point of time. For my analysis, I'll just be looking at 2006-2008. Not sure what that bottom pit is in 2005.
This is what's interesting to me:
- The first top peak is at Thanksgiving in 2005, followed by January 2007 and January 2008 which um is supposed to be New Year's resolution time when everyone is supposedly on the whole lose weight bandwagon. Perhaps the stress of gaining weight over the holidays or wanting to lose weight makes us want the comfort food more?
- As we head to the end of 2008, you can see the peak with the longest stretch which looks like it started around the time the financial crisis started to hit big time. Nothing shocking there. I myself was indulging in more of the sweets, my comfort food of choice.
- The lowest points are basically April-August, spring through summer. Swimsuit and wedding season, not a shocker there either.
- Not on the chart, but of interest from this video, the top 5 Googled comfort foods were in order:
- Ice Cream
- Chili
- Spaghetti
- Meatloaf
- Fried Chicken
My personal comfort foods include: cupcakes, cookies, hamburgers, french fries, and my mom's Arroz Caldo soup which is basically a chicken & rice soup Filipino style.
So, why do you think people are searching more for comfort foods over the holidays and at New Year's resolution time than during spring/summer? Does the sun make us happier so we crave the comfort foods less? Does the cold and the holidays make us more stressed out so we wanna food medicate?
What's your favorite comfort food, and do you find you eat it more or less at certain times of the year, in different climates, or times of unusual stress?
